Now this seems like just stupid message board nonsense on a bye week.
Let’s start pre season not thinking we would have any offense and the coaches were mediocre. Everyone , including the clueless, must admit that this coaching staff, leave Greg alone for a minute , Kirk , Flats , Brock , Adams , Joe H, Corey H, Lascari , and Orphey have done an outstanding job with their individual units. The defensive line is badly missing Watson and it is showing but this is without a doubt the best staff Greg has ever had on the banks. Coaching has gotten us to 6-2.
Now most unbiased publications have us about the 47th ranked team in the country ( The Athletic guy ranking 1-133 weekly ) and that is probably about right. Maybe as high as 40 and as low as 50. That is a whole jump from last year and now for the first time since 2014 , Rutgers football is not coupled with a bad joke but the media refers to in a positive manner with Big 10 and national accolades to boot. We are not a top 25 team but we are not that far off at about 40.
Now back to Greg , his staples of defense and special teams , are on full display now ( Must admit until the last 2 weeks , I was wondering when the punt blocks and special team touchdowns were coming , but they are finally here ). We have a top 10-15 defense in the country , they are disciplined , hit hard , tackle well , have few breakdowns ( except 6 in the Michigan game ) and close to the top in tackling as well as stop rate. We are a formidable test for any team and that includes Ohio State, Penn State and Maryland. Special teams have now set the bar and punt blocks are back in play and our Kickoffs are out of the end zone and Patel has been really solid. With the exception of punt return or kick off return( not as important because it hardly happens) , we are in the top 20 in the country .
Greg has gone for it on 4th down (12-17 times so he is definitely different than before. The team has less penalties and less pre snap penalties which leads one to conclude they are disciplined and Greg gets the credit there as the head coach but more importantly he has left Kirk and Flats alone to establish a functional offense without too much meddling that he did way too much in 1.0. He named Gavin the starter and allowed Kirk to develop him without wavering and without the prior bullshit of yanking the QB drive by drive . That is growth from him as well.
Yes, the teams we have beat are not world beaters but 4 of the wins have been by 3 TDS, ((NW, Temple , VaTech , Indiana ) and all ending up being comfortable wins. Plus , somehow he kept his team’s head in the game down 24-6 in the fourth quarter and came back to beat MSU comfortably 27-24 ( I say comfortably because we caused the 3 and out and held the ball for the last 7 minutes of the 4th quarter, and probably would have scored another TD, in one of the more dominant 4th quarters in our history ) . Greg gets some credit for MSU along with the players.
Michigan and Wisconsin were losses but the final scores were not indicative of how close those games were and I would argue our tremendous OC had 2 brain farts and called 2 of the worst possible calls that changed the momentum for sure and maybe the outcome of those games. Some of the skeptics , you know who you are , said “ Wisconsin would blow us out “. Well that didn’t happen even on a day Gavin had his worst day of the year.
So overall , no need to crown Greg yet , but definitely time to give him huge props for his coaching staff and his getting us to 6-2 by October 21. Plus although there is a chance we could go 0-4 , I for one thinks that is highly unlikely with this team that is getting better every week and actually thinks we have a shot to win in 2 of the games for sure and quite competitive in the other 2. None of us was saying that before the season.